Nic clung like a leech to the Wretch-Queen’s back, draining her evolution. Amber energy poured into his chest, stolen away, and her form suffered. Her right arm was twisted, broken, half the size of the left and permanently curled. Her right foot ended in a club-stump. Breaks and tears stretched across her armor…

If she’d needed to cocoon to evolve, Nic could have devoured her alive for his own growth. As it was, he could only drain away a little energy, but it was energy her body desperately needed.

As for what he needed…

Solid ground.

They were rising higher and higher with every breath. The queen’s wings brought them spiraling up from the depths of the earth to the open sky. Wind howled past his ears. His skin burned, even with Gwungo’s protective layer of slime adjusting to ‘devour’ the heat. Vertigo clutched at his guts, twisting them up as he watched the world drop away.

In the distance, there was Winterhome. The vast turtle was watching them with a single dark eye.

The beast halted, mid-air, wings beating hard to keep its massive body aloft. There was some magic there, something beyond the iron laws of physics. Nic could tell what she was thinking…

She saw the city and it saw food, riches, and domination.

She saw everything he’d built and wanted to burn it to the ground.

Not just for spite, although the creature was in constant pain; but because the only hope for escape from that pain, for escape from the ignoble deaths that had claimed every other wretch…

The only hope for life…

Was to kill and to grow.

Nic sighed and let go. The wind took him as he dropped away, leaving the wretch-queen to turn in surprise. He drew out Hollowsong, nocking the last of his featherflight arrows, and took aim at Winterhome far below.

The wretch-queen had folded her wings and begun to chase him. She descended with her talons outstretched to catch him.

He fired.

The arrow flickered out as the bowstring snapped taut, and for a moment, nothing happened. Everything was in flight. Nic falling, the queen chasing, the arrow flying far and away…

The arrow struck before the talons could close around him. Nic was pulled away, feeling his essence stretch and break into pieces, deforming to leap across the vast distance.

One moment he was watching the enemy’s claws plunge towards his face.

The next he hit the ground, hard, and felt his slimy bones shatter. He went rolling, tearing up the grass and soft mud as his body skipped and bounced across the earth. Nic crashed into the lake, feeling utter relief as the weightlessness of sinking covered him, lifting away his earthly burdens.

The enemy was coming to him. He would have to face it soon. But for now, what he needed was to rest, recuperate, and grow stronger. The bloodline sea promised all three.

Amber light obscured his form.

He cocooned and began to evolve.

---

The Invaders came like shadows in the night. A doorway made of moonlight opened and they dropped down, floating in slowfall.

Six dhampir in black robes entered Winterfell; their leader was painted with bone white ink across his face, a metal disk inset with gold and jewels hovering behind his head like a halo. “You all know your duties.” He said. “Vargille. Kassian. Dulloc. Do not return until your hands drip with blood.”

The three named bowed their heads and vanished, becoming leaping shadows that shot towards the core of Winterhome.

“The rest of you are with me.”

He drew a talisman out of his belt and crushed it. Inky light squirmed around his fist like a thousand thin serpents, extending out into the air and vanishing. Just like that, the city’s steward was immobilized and silenced.

There would be no warning from her.

But they were not shadows in the night, unknown to the residents of the town before them.

They had been seen by the birds in the trees above, by the beasts in the wood, even by the thin mist that drifted across the earth. Alarms carried through the world.

They would find the town ready to fight.

---

The stomp and thump of boots made the floating platform shake underfoot. The warriors of Winterhome had gathered to drink shitty fruit wine brewed in a stump, eat insect-meat that they were promised hadn’t been some poor human in a past life, and hear the tales of the hunt.

Lou was holding court. People fell silent when he spoke, letting him unfold the tale. He felt like a king atop his throne, and he’d drank more than anyone.

But he was just playing his role.

Lou knew what people needed. People needed a story. Just over a month ago, their story had been quiet and safe; the story of getting up, doing your job, going to bed, and filling the little gaps in between with whatever small comforts you could; some of them had seen a future, others had just seen the present stretching on forever.

But they’d all known where they fitted in. A good story held people together tight.

Now? Now they were out in the woods, trying to piece together something that looked like the world they knew. They were struggling just to get some threadbare sleep on mattresses of straw in timber shacks that creaked with the tides and the wind; every day they faced more adversity than a single lifetime had held, back on Earth, and you know what?

They had kept on living anyway. Lou figured that made them brave. They just needed to realize it.

They’d met monsters and survived, but they didn’t know that made them warriors.

They didn’t know because nobody had told them yet. Right now, they thought they were lost in the woods, getting very little sleep, and worrying all the time.

Their leader, the little pink murder-machine, he was always cutting forward. The rest of them could barely lag along in his shadow, and that was when he stopped to let them catch up. There was something there. The outline of someone to inspire them, to tell them a story…

Except the boss didn’t tell stories. He just said what was on his mind and did what he pleased. It made him solid, reliable, but not inspiring; so maybe he needed other people to help make him inspiring. To take all the things he’d done and twist them into a form people could whisper and take hope from.

That was what Winterhome needed. Someone to tell the people who they were. Where they fit in.

Even the leader needed to be told who he really was: a legend being made.

So, Lou told that legend. He started with the stories he’d heard from people who had come out of the desert, about how one day, their camp had turned to a sea of fire and hidden pitfalls. The earth had turned against them and the shadows had filled with danger.

Winterhome had walked in and walked out, taking the captive elves with him. A whole ship of warriors had chased him out into the desert…

And only one person from that entire ship had come back alive.

It was like that, when the boss hardened his heart and decided to kill. It would come, sudden and swift as a shadow. The world would erupt into chaos, and even the ground underfoot would betray you.

“Oh and that’s a good thing?” Somebody called out. “Killing people’s good now? Why don’t we just paint our faces in blood too, if we’re leaning into this apocalypse crap now?”

Lou smiled and turned his voice low, almost threatening.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, as far as I’m concerned it is a good thing. Because I tell you what. Sooner or later, no matter how nice and civilized we are, we will meet people who ain’t that way at all. The savages, with the blood on their faces like you said. And then what? Huh?”

“You gotta realize. Being a good person used to look like, I dunno, helping old ladies across the street. Volunteering at the animal shelter. Y’know. Easy shit. Giving a little when you had a lot.”

“Nobody had to kill, nobody had to face up to taking a life. Nowadays we do. All of us. We gotta be ready to fight. Because if we’re not, then it’s not just us who pays. It’s the people behind us- the people who can’t fight.”

“That’s what kindness looks like now, in the world we live in today. It’s about lifting your share, and then, more than your share, because you can. Because you’ve got that much strength to give. It’s about fighting, and cutting out a place where it doesn’t have to be about fighting all the time.”

“We’d still be sitting in shitty little camps drinking rainwater and jumping at shadows if he hadn’t come along.”

Lou took a deep drink, letting that settle in. The silence was rich, full of people drinking up what he’d said, turning it over in their heads.

“Anyway, I’ve never heard of him killing anyone who didn’t ask for it.” One of Lou’s squadmates - Micah or something like that, this real stringy kid - added in.

Lou seized on that.

“Yeah!” He lifted his cup. “Yeah, why don’t you ask Makepeace about that, huh?”

“Cuz they didn’t just throw him into jail. No, no, they paraded him through the streets, I heard. Made a show of pissing him off. ‘Cuz they weren’t smart and they weren’t kind either.”

“Couple people from down that way have come over to us, and from what they say? Makepeace was a bad town. You had to pay with your sweat and your blood just for the hope that if things went wrong, maybe someone protects you.”

And Lou pointed into the audience, his fingers stabbing towards the ones who’d told him the story.

“That’s the world that could be. The most powerful eating up the people below them, and telling them to be thankful. Last I heard he never took anything from one of us.”

“And you know how he got out of Makepeace?”

“I heard he walked through fire. All at once every bird in the city croaked out a single warning, and every single person who’d ignored that warning died.”

“But everybody who listened, lived.” Lou smiled, turning on his campfire voice, the one he’d used to tell children scary stories at summer camp a lifetime ago. “See, he came out of the prison as a six-armed snake. A spear in each hand. And everyone who got in his way-”

His palm struck the table.

“Dead. Speared through into the dirt. They chased him all around the city, and everytime they thought they got him-”

BAM. His hand smacked against the table a second time, building into a rhythm.

“Turns out it was just another trap, pulling the ground out from under their feet.”

“But like I said. If they wanted to live…” Lou drained his cup in one. “All they had to do was let him go. That there’s people out there who can’t let go, that is what I’m telling you. People who get one taste of power and start crushing down on everyone with less.”

“Kindness? What kindness looks like, these days, is getting power and choosing not to be like that. To not spit in the face of everyone weaker than you.”

“Sure, if you put him back on Earth, our Earth, our world, he’d be a maniac. But that’s the old way.”

“Now there’s a new one. Your old logic doesn’t apply. You need sword-logic now.” He tapped his forehead. “Killing logic. It means… It means standing your ground even when the earth keeps changing underfoot. You can’t afford to live like you used too, thinking every day’s going to be the same. You gotta open your eyes. You have to drink in the world and seize every chance you see…”

“That’s the way of things. Here and now, that’s the way things have to be.”

And right when Lou was wrapping up, and beginning to pound his empty cup on the longtable to emphasize each word, he saw what was coming.

Rising up over the city there was a winged shadow.

A flicker in the crowd, and Sofia was there, the ghost in the city’s dreams. She lifted her hands and called, “SILENCE!” as the crowd saw what Lou saw and began to panic.

They stopped, for a beat.

“Everyone. We are under attack. Return to your assigned squads. I will give each of you positions within the city, so we’re ready to defend-”

And then she cut out. Vanished. Flickered into nothing.

The silence held for a second longer, and then someone yelled, “She’s dead!”

Lou broke through as panic returned, stronger than ever. His voice boomed over as he lifted his halberd and slammed it into the table, splitting the wood with a deafening crack.

“She’s not dead, and neither are we, so we’ve got no excuses! We’ve got our orders. You! You!” He jabbed his fingers towards two squad-mates. “Find the rest of your squad, now! Get to the center of the city. Jamall, you’re on the upper left! Dianne, you’re upper right! Spread the word to anyone you meet, tell them to either get to their squad or bunker down and stay safe! Everyone! Stay close together, keep listening; if a fight breaks out you go and you help. We’ve got the numbers! We’ve got the city!”

He whipped life into them. They had been breaking apart, going in all directions as they stared up at the sky. Now they came back to life; they remembered who they were.

Fighters.

Hunters.

Organized into squads, they broke off for their positions, and Lou was the last in line, grabbing stragglers and forcing them to tell him whose squad they were on, where they belonged. Under his gaze even the cowards were pushed into action.

And then he was alone.

Except for the shifting motion in the shadows. A blue-skinned creature with a sharp, gaunt face and pointed ears stepped out, its face printed with dark tattoos down the left side. Oily hair cascaded down its shoulders. Its nose was pressed back into folds, its teeth sharp. “You are the leader, then?” The thing asked.

“Oh you wish.” He shot back with a smile. Lou lifted his halberd. He didn’t call for help.

They had their duties, and he had his.